Back in the good old days Britannia ruled the waves and kept all the natives and troublemakers in line.
So imagine Britain as being the parents, and imagine they had 10 children.
Several of their children turned out alright - France, Germany, Italy are all noted for their hard work, innovation, culture, art, music and contribution to the World.
Mother England's favourite child is, of course, New Zealand; Canada is a plodder but gets there in the end, and the triplets in East Africa are still sending money home each month to help out.
You can therefore understand the despair of Britain when she looks across the Atlantic to her 10th child - America.
America was the child she had when the genes had run out; the child who is a bit 'slow', a bit 'special'; the dullard child you used to hide away in a convent.
Ever since it was born it has been one thing after another with America.
First it was settled by lunatic religious fanatics, then they kept whingeing and moaning about all sorts of problems from failed crops to Red Indians to a labour shortage.
Mother England was forced to roll her eyes and say "grow something else" as a solution to the first problem, "shoot the buggers" to the second, and gave America lots of slaves to help out with the third - receiving not one word of gratitude in return! (damned cheek!)
Then teenaged America got frightfully wayward; developed a stupid accent, talked with a bizarre syntax, and kept complaining about "no taxation without representation".
England was far too polite to point out to it's halfwit son (with an IQ of about 6) that car keys and a keg of beer would result in far less damage than lawmaking in Parliament, and so refused.
America then stormed out of the house declaring it didn't need its parents any longer ("but can we keep the car?") and decided to go its own way.
This, as its despairing parents had feared, ushered in 240 years of America being obsessed, in a way unique in the World, with such things as nude bodies, sodomy, alcohol, atheism, swear words, pornography and Mexicans - any one of which would lead to hysterical screaming and conniptions at the drop of a hat.
Other matters guaranteed to generate sighs and groans from the rest of the family included generations of morons on the Prairies, stupid names, an even worse syntax, and an ignorance of the World.
America never understood why everyone gasped in horror whenever they met and heard the accent of someone with two first names (such as 'Billy Bob'), or sniggered when America considered hamburgers and coca cola to be haute cuisine, or wondered why their national sport of Baseball hadn't updated uniforms since the Victorian age.
Such is the blissful existence of the idiot child.
And so to the present day.....
Britain is at home sitting on the sofa reading a magazine waiting for its son America to pop in for a cup of tea and a chat.
The magazine has a story which contains all manner of sadly predictable statistics about Americans including -
* 10% of people think Judge Judy is on the Supreme Court
* [only] 66% realise America gained independence from Britain
* 25% think the Sun revolves around the Earth
* 77% believe in angels
* 41% believe humans and dinosaurs coexisted
* 11% believe HTML is a sexually transmitted disease you can catch
* 19% think they are personally in the top 1%
* 25% believe MP3 is a Star Wars robot
* 18% think Blu-ray is a marine animal
* 43% believe humans have existed since the beginning of time
* 13% think a USB port is a city in Europe
As America walks up to the front door and knocks he is puzzled to hear shrieks of laughter coming from inside, and wonders what the joke is.
Britain opens the door, hugs its 'special' child, and asks "so, how is 240 years of being on your own as a grown up Adult working out for you?"